Venezuelan exodus overwhelms its neighbors

Brazilian, Colombian border towns are overwhelmed by hungry hordes

PACARAIMA, Brazil - Rosibel Diaz used to affectionately call her 4-year-old son "my chubby boy." She couldn't stand it when he started going hungry.

So in November, Diaz packed up her family's possessions and boarded a bus with the boy and her 11-month-old daughter to escape Venezuela's famished interior. She now lives under a blue tarp in a trash-strewn alleyway of this Brazilian border village,where she begs for food.

"I won't go back," said the rail-thin mother, who lost her job as a home nursing aide four years ago. She leaned against a pole, feeding a piece of bread to the baby. "We are surviving here," she said.

Survival for Venezuelans such as Diaz is becoming a matter of flight. About 10,000 Venezuelans are streaming into Brazil every month in search of food and medicine, authorities say, camping out on the streets and swamping government services in Amazon frontier towns ill-prepared to receive them.

Chronic food shortages, rampant violence and the erratic and often paranoid behavior of President Nicolas Maduro have turned the country's border crossings and beaches into escape valves.

It is an exodus by land, sea and air. Venezuela's well-to-do can leave on planes, if they haven't already. Rickety boats ferry small groups of migrants to Curacao, Bonaire and other Caribbean nations a short distance from Venezuela's north coast. But those numbers are dwarfed by the tens of thousands pouring into Brazil and Colombia each month - either for emergency shopping trips or a long-term stay.

Large-scale crisis

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Venezuela's economic meltdown and political chaos have left its neighbors fearful of a large-scale humanitarian crisis that could bring even greater numbers of needy migrants.

Every month seems to bring a new low. Maduro attempted to outlaw Venezuela's largest banknote in mid-December, a measure that he said would strike at foreign powers conspiring to sabotage his socialist government. Instead, cash dried up, retail commerce froze, and Maduro suspended the move as rioting and looting erupted.

It was a reminder to the whole region that Venezuela is burning on a short fuse, and Maduro's cash-strapped government will need a major boost in global petroleum prices to avert disaster.

"We are working with the understanding that things will get worse," Gustavo Marrone, the highest-ranking immigration official in Brazil's justice ministry, said in an interview. "The immigration issue can only be fixed when you deal with the problem at the origin, not at the destination."

Maduro abruptly closed Venezuela's border with Brazil and Colombia on multiple occasions last year, ordering the crossings reopened with just as little notice. This, too, appears to be fueling a sense of urgency among Venezuelans who opt to face precarious living conditions in neighboring countries rather than suffer the hunger and social breakdown back home.

Weight of influx

Brazilian government services are buckling under the weight of the sudden influx of Venezuelan migrants. Their arrival has overwhelmed Roraima, a poor, sparsely populated state the size of Wyoming.

Venezuelans account for 60 percent of all hospital visits along the border, according to the Health Ministry in this northern state. Infections from sexually transmitted diseases are skyrocketing from the arrival of so many Venezuelan prostitutes. In December, Roraima's governor declared a state of emergency and appealed for federal assistance to cope with the crush of border-crossers.

Venezuelans can enter Brazil without a visa and remain for 90 days, but even Venezuelans who don't have passports can skirt checkpoints to enter the country illegally. Pacaraima is surrounded by an indigenous reserve that straddles the border, making it easy to cross into Brazil.

Almost overnight, sleepy border towns such as Pacaraima have been transformed into bustling hubs of international commerce, where makeshift supermarkets pop up selling food, medicine, soap and other goods that are hard to find in Venezuela.

The crisis is similar in the Colombian cities along the border with Venezuela.

Colombian authorities last year registered 6 million visits by Venezuelans crossing into their country, many of them to purchase food that has become scarce back home.

There are no formal immigration checks at the busy crossings, so Venezuelans can freely enter Colombia as tourists, and it is unknown how many aren't going back. But Christian Kruger, Colombia's top immigration official, said many Venezuelans are remaining to work illegally.